Monday, 24 June 2013

Pa's home made Gluten-free Victoria Sponge Cake

Hi Pa is back with a trial run on baking and icing a gluten-free vegetarian celebration cake.Several errors glorified this attempt, some were successfully covered up, others are all too obvious for your amusement. Despite this the cake was successful in as much as it tasted great and was devoured with glee.

So here we go. A small edit here, to go with the photo. The very first attempt with the oranges went completely silly due to following quantities in a recipe that turned out to be more suitable for pancakes when put in the tin. The revised recipe uses lemon zest rather than orange but I forgot to take a new picture. So use your imagination please.

Now to my mistakes! Well the sponge tops collapsed a little in the final few minutes of cooking, I was fortunately able to cover this because the tops were sliced off anyway to make the sandwich. I think this was caused because the cake mix was too moist, a problem we have previously encountered using gluten-free flour, so do assess your mix and add a little more flour if necessary to get a stiff batter. Also avoid over-beating as I mention in the Method, this was my first time with an electric mixer rather than my little food ninja whisking by hand and I may have got a little overenthusiastic, which I am reliably informed can cause sponge collapse. Always best to use your ninja I think. With the icing; three points.

Butter icing and ready to roll icing are not a good combination

If using a wet palette knife to smooth the butter icing make sure you give plenty of drying time before adding your decorations.

Roll the icing between baking parchment, do not oil your rolling pin to prevent sticking.

As you can see in the pic breaking these three points gives shiny hearts that are dragging the butter icing down under their weight. All in all I ended up with a messy finish but fortunately a tasty cake. I did wonder if I had added to much lemon but was reliably informed by one daughter that you can never add too much lemon.Like garlic, or cinnamon in their appropriate dishes. So thanks to all three daughters and Tich the dog for the unanimous thumbs up for this cake and a message to you readers, mistakes and errors may creep into your baking, so top class flavouring is essential if the finished product is to rise above them. So get baking folks and try to learn from my mistakes rather repeat them but remember to always cook the food you love and love the food you cook.Love bakes and bites from Pa -->